McDonough: 'Going to find the votes' on weapons ban

Though Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is not including a ban on so-called assault weapons in Senate Democrats’ legislative package on guns, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough said Tuesday that the measure deserves a vote and that “we’re going to find the votes.”

Mr. McDonough said it was a very good step that several gun-related measures were passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee and was awaiting to see exactly what Mr. Reid brings to the floor.

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“As the president said in his State of the Union, Jake, what we want is votes on each of these issues to include the assault weapons ban,” Mr. McDonough told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “The Lead.” “There will be amendments, I’m sure, from Sen. [Dianne] Feinstein, who’s been a champion of this now, over the course of decades because of her own experience in San Francisco and what she’s seen, frankly, across this country.”

“So we’re going to work on this, we’re going to find the votes, and it deserves a vote — let’s see if we can get it done,” he continued.

President Obama included a ban on military-style, semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity magazines in the gun control package he rolled out in January after December’s shooting rampage at a Connecticut elementary school. He brought Democrats to their feet at his State of the Union address by naming gun-crime victims and repeatedly saying that they “deserve a vote” by Congress on his gun-control package.